Security officials gave Tory MP Bob Dechert a thumbs up months after he sent flirtatious emails to a journalist working for a state-run news agency linked to China's intelligence services.
Mr. Dechert, as parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Justice, passed a fresh round of cabinet security checks in March of this year, a newly disclosed document indicates.
The briefing note for Prime Minister Stephen Harper outlines the results of a renewed security review of all cabinet ministers, ministers of state and parliamentary secretaries.
Mr. Harper ordered cabinet-security clearances every two years in the wake of the Maxime Bernier affair in 2008. The Quebec MP, who was then Foreign Affairs minister, forgot a secret briefing binder at the home of his girlfriend, who had links to biker gangs.
The March 24 document from the Privy Council Office, marked “secret,” was obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.
“The renewal of background checks on members of the ministry and parliamentary secretaries has been finalized,” says the note, signed by Wayne Wouters, Clerk of the Privy Council.
“In 2008, the Prime Minister requested that security background checks on Ministers, Ministers of State and Parliamentary Secretaries, and their spouses or partners, be renewed every two years while the appointee occupies a position as Minister, Minister of State or Parliamentary Secretary.”
Further details in the note are censored. But Dechert retained his position as parliamentary secretary immediately after the March security check – and became parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the cabinet shuffle soon after the May 2 election campaign. (He’d been in the justice portfolio since March of 2010.)
Last week, Mr. Dechert acknowledged sending amorous notes to Shi Rong, a journalist who works for the Xinhua News Agency, which has been linked to China's intelligence agencies. He insisted the relationship was “innocent.”
“The person is a journalist whom I have come to know as a friend. I met her while doing Chinese-language media communications,” Mr. Dechert said in a statement posted on his website. “These emails are flirtatious, but the friendship remained innocent and simply that – a friendship.”
The Globe and Mail reported that Ms. Shi said her husband had hacked her email account, which Mr. Dechert appeared to reiterate. “My understanding is that her emails were hacked as part of an ongoing domestic dispute,” he said in the statement.
The flirtatious emails, distributed anonymously to almost 250 recipients last week, date back to 2010.
A spokesman for Mr. Harper had no comment when asked whether the Prime Minister's Office or Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird's office got a briefing about Mr. Dechert's relationship with Shi. Mr. Baird had no comment Monday.
Mr. Dechert also wasn't immediately available for comment Monday.
The relationship, if known to the government, should have raised red flags, given that a public servant was fired from her job in the Privy Council Office because she once worked for the same news agency.
Chinese-born Canadian Haiyan Zhang, then a rising star in Ottawa's civil service, caught the attention of Canada's spy agency shortly after being hired to work at PCO in February 2003.
A September 2003 letter from PCO, referenced in a Public Service Labour Relations Board decision on her case, says that based on the Canadian Security Intelligence Service assessment, there were concerns about her loyalty to Canada.
“Our first concern is that, particularly as a former employee of the New China News Agency (aka Xinhua News Agency), you may have engaged in intelligence collection activities on behalf of a foreign state,” the PCO letter says.
“Secondly, we are concerned that you appear to maintain regular contact with foreign representatives who may be involved in intelligence collection activities.
“These concerns raise serious doubt as to whether you should be granted or should retain a government security clearance.”
